Untitled - Rebel Studies Library

132 PLANET OF SLUMS
poor people still cannot afford transit services. Thus cities face pressure
to keep fares very low. But in doing so, they sacrifice bus quality and
comfort. Middle-class riders react by buying cars as soon as they can.
With low cost scooters and motorcycles, the flight of the middle class is
hastened, transit revenues diminish, and operators reduce quality further
as they serve a poorer clientele. Although the quality of service suffers
first, a decrease in quantity of service often follows.32
International development agencies encourage destructive transport
policies by their preference for financing roads rather than rails, as well
as by encouraging the privatization of local transportation. In China -
formerly the home of the egalitarian bicycle - planners now give irrational
priority to automobiles. Beijing has destroyed vast swaths of
traditional courtyard housing for the poor as well as its picturesque
hutong (back alley) network in order to make room for boulevards and
motorways. Simultaneously, bicycle commuters have been penalized by
new license fees, restrictions on using arterial roads, and the end of the
bicycle subsidies formerly paid by work units.33
The result of this collision between urban poverty and trafflc congestion
is sheer carnage. More than one million people - two-thirds of
them pedestrians, cyclists, and passengers - are killed in road accidents
in the Third World each year. "People who will never own a car in their
life," reports a World Health Organization researcher, "are at the
greatest risk."34 Minibuses and jitneys, often unlicensed and poorly
maintained, are particularly dangerous: in Lagos, for example, the buses
are known locally as danfos and molues, "flying coffins" and "moving
morgues."35 Nor does the snail's pace of traffic in most poor cities
reduce its lethality. Although cars and buses crawl through Cairo at
average speeds of less than 10 kilometers per hour, the Egyptian capital
still manages an accident rate of 8 deaths and 60 injuries per 1 000
32 Sperling and Clausen, "The Developing World's Motorization Challenge," p. 3.
33 Example of Beijing in Sit, Beijing, pp. 288-89.
34 Study by WHO-funded Road Traffic Injuries Research Network, quoted in
Detroit Free Press, 24 September 2002.
35 Vinand Nantulya and Michael Reich, "The Neglected Epidemic: Road Traffic
Injuries in Developing Countries," British Journal of Medicine 324 (11 May 2002),
pp. 1139--41 .
SLUM ECOLOGY 133
automobiles per year.36 In Lagos, where the average resident spends an
incredible three hours each day marooned in angry gridlock, private
commuters and minibus drivers literally go berserk - indeed, so many
drivers jump curbs or drive on the wrong side of the road that the
Trafflc Ministry has recently imposed mandatory psychiatric tests on
offenders.37 In Delhi, meanwhile, the Hindustan Times recently complained
that middle-class commuters seldom bother to stop after
running over homeless ragpickers or poor children.38
The overall economic cost of road deaths and injuries, according to
the World Health Organization (WHO), is estimated as "almost twice
the total development assistance received worldwide by developing countries."
The WHO, indeed, considers trafflc to be one of the worst health
hazards facing the urban poor, and predicts that road accidents by 2020
will be the third leading cause of death.39 China, where cars are wresting
control of urban streets from bicycles and pedestrians, will unfortunately
lead the way: almost one-quarter-million Chinese were kiJled or seriously
injured in trafflc accidents in the first five months of 2003 alone.40
Rampant motorization, of course, is also exacerbating the nightmare
of air pollution in Third World cities. Myriad old cars, beat-up
buses, and superannuated trucks asphyxiate urban areas with their
deadly exhaust, while the dirty two-stroke engines that power small
vehicles emit ten times as much fine particulate matter as modern cars.
According to a recent study, foul air is most deadly in the sprawling
megacities of Mexico (300 bad ozone smog days per year), Sao Paulo,
Delhi, and Beijing.41 Breathing Mumbai's air, meanwhile, is the
36 EI Arabi, "Urban Growth and Environmental Degradation," pp. 392-94; and
Oberai, Population Growth, Employment and Poverry in Third World Mega-Cities, p. 16
(accident rate).
37 Glenn McKenzie, "Psychiatric Tests Required for Traffic Offenders," ReJNova,
20 June 2003; and Peil, "Urban Housing and Services in Anglophone West Mrica,"
p. 178 .
38 Hindustan Times, 1 February 2004.
39 WHO, "Road Safety Is No Accident!" (November 2003); and Road Traffic
Injuries Research Network cited in Detroit Free Press, 24 September 2002.
40 People 's DailY (English), 24 June 2003.
41 Asim Khan, "Urban Air Pollution in Megacities of the World," Green Times
(Spring 1997); published by Penn Environmental Group). See also: "Commentary:
Urban Air Pollution," in Current Science 77:3 (10 August 1999), p. 334; "World Bank
Group Meets to Clean Up Asia's Deadly Air," Associated Press, 22 July 2003.